Some Tales of Vaudeville Suicide, Despair and Murder

This one is by special request — a reader (some morbid soul) wanted to see more stories like a certain tragic one we posted a few days ago. Essentially this is just a round up of several tales of show business tragedies, mostly vaudeville, but I’ve added some Hollywood ones as well. Just click on the performer’s name to learn more.

Down and Out, Penniless, Forgotten: 

Tens of thousands of aspiring stage and screen performers found themselves in this predicament, but we mention a few notables who had been either at the top, or very successful, and spent their last days broke and alone: Stephen Foster, the Father of American Song died drunk, penniless, singing for his supper and owing back-rent for his Bowery hotel room (this was in the days before songwriters got royalties),  Eva Tanguay, at one point the “Queen of Vaudeville” and one of the highest paid entertainers in the country, died blind, bed-ridden, and broke; Clarice Vance, also a star, wound up homeless and eventually in an insane asylum; Agnes Ayres, a Paramount star, toppled from fame, eventually losing her child, and going mad; Johnny Arthur died a charity case; Leo Dryden spent his last days singing for coppers on street corners. However, the most extreme cases wound up as:

Suicides 

Nat M. Wills, “The Happy Tramp”, suffering money and romantic woes, may have been one of the first people to kill himself with automobile exhaust fumes. There is some ambiguity because it was not well known at the time that one could actually die that way. And his career was going just great at the time. In most cases, the facts were much clearer. The clown Slivers Oakley killed himself with gas when vaudeville didn’t pan out. Premiere monologist Charley Case shot himself in his hotel room. Legendary screen beauty Mary Nolan’s slow descent ended with an overdose of pills. Jenny Dolly of the Dolly Sisters, having lost her beauty in a car accident, hanged herself. Lou Tellegen stabbed himself when talkies killed his career. Paul McCullough of Clark and McCullough, chronically depressed, slit his own throat while sitting in a barber chair. Sideshow performer Waldo the Human Ostrich gassed himself when a love affair went sour. Actor John Bowers drowned himself over a career decline (some think this event was the model for the climax of A Star is Born). Silent screen comedienne Phyllis Haver had been tragically isolated for years when she took an overdose of sleeping pills in 1960.  And one of the greatest of all 20th century comedians Max Linder and his wife, despondent over failing health and career, each committed TRIPLE suicides by taking barbiturates, injecting morphine, and cutting themselves.

The above folks all have connections to vaudeville. We’ve also written about some purely Hollywood suicides, including Peg Entwistle (who jumped off the famous “Hollywood” sign); the “Mexican Spitfire” Lupe Velez, who took pills when she became pregnant out of wedlock; Clara Blandick (Aunt Em of The Wizard of Oz), who suffocated herself with a plastic bag in response to health problems; and Doodles Weaver who shot himself.

Syphillis and Other Diseases

Strange to think that we could get a whole category out of venereal disease, but in the days before penicillin it took a shocking number of lives — especially (it shouldn’t surprise you to learn) a high number in the theatrical community. It was a terrible way to go because it usually first manifested itself in madness. The afflicted person was normally put away for a few years before they finally gave up the ghost. At any rate; the risks were known at the time, so in a way, to die in this manner was a kind of a suicide. Those who went in this fashion included Scott Joplin; Maurice Barrymore; George Walker of Walker and Williams; Tony Hart of Harrigan and Hart; Bob Cole of Cole and Johnson; Harry Kernell of the Kernell Brothers; Ernest Hogan; and Joe Welch.

Mabel Normand died of TB at 37. Tuberculosis was also common in those days, although Normand was almost certainly weakened from her hard-partying life style. Fellow silent comedian Larry Semon also died of the disease, among other factors.

If we concede that alcoholism is a disease, the catalog of those whose lives were shortened, ended or harmed by that affliction would be too long to list but some prominent examples included W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, Lillian Roth, Leo Gorcey, Bert Williams and Jack Pickford. (and some of those also mentioned elsewhere on this page)

DISASTERS AND ACCIDENTS 

A few notable examples of stagefolk who died prematurely under bizarre or sudden circumstances. Blackface performer Artie Hall was killed when a theatre collapsed during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Magician Ching Ling Foo died while performing the dangerous “bullet catch” stunt. Houdini died of peritonitis after some college students punched him in the stomach, rupturing his appendix. Drag performer Bert Savoy was struck by lightning. Cowboy star Buck Jones was killed in a terrible night club fire. Olive Thomas accidentally drank poison, resulting in a slow, painful hospital death. Rosetta Duncan of the Duncan Sisters died in a car crash, as did Bernard Gorcey. Marilyn Miller’s story is a double tragedy: first her husband Frank Carter died in a car accident, then she herself was killed in a botched hospital operation.

MURDER

A few notable murders have found their way into these pages. There’s the famous William Desmond Taylor mystery. Most rule comedienne Thelma Todd’s death a murder (there are SUSPECTS and suspicious circumstances) although it’s possible it may have been an accident or suicide. Professor Backwards was famously killed by some inept robbers. Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer lost his life over a petty money dispute.

Fame and wealth are all well and good; but NO ONE escapes the ubiquitous pitfalls of life on Abattoir Earth!

For more on the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever vitally informative books are sold. For more on silent film, consult Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube,  released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc. 

 

 

Fifteen Famous Females Named “Billie”

This non sequitur of a blogpost came about because I noticed that show business has given us more than one female performer with the unusual first name of “Billie”. We post it today because it happens to be the birthday of Billie Whitelaw. As a small child, I probably became aware of Billie Burke and Billie Hayes at around the same time and found it fascinating that a woman would have that name. It’s sort of a rare name for a female, right? I’ve never met one IRL.  As a kid I considered it the female equivalent of “A Boy named Sue”. At any rate, there seemed to be a sort of interesting cluster of them at the beginning of the last century; it seemed kind of fun to compare and contrast them. For example, there seems to be an abnormally high association of the name with fantasy and magic, and a few are pioneers in one way or another. Click on links to learn more about their fascinating stories.

Billie Bennett (Emily B. Haynie, 1874-1951)

This interesting actress will be getting her own post on Travalanche later this years, for she got her start acting in many Mack Sennett and Keystone comedy shorts with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, and Mabel Normand. In the 20s she was in some major silent features, including Robin Hood (1922) and Lady Windemere’s Fan (1925). Her career did not long outlast the advent of sound, but ironically her life began to be even more interesting at that point. It has been alleged that she became the madam of a “high class bordello” for studio execs and their guests, where many of the call girls were hired based on their their resemblances to major screen actresses of the day. Surely a partial inspiration for L.A. Confidential?

Billie Burke (Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke, 1884-1970)

Wife of Broadway producer Flo Ziegfeld, and star of stage and screen, most memorably as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. 

Billie Dove (Bertha Bohnny, 1903-1997)

Artist model, Ziegfeld girl, and major star of silent movies such as The Black Pirate (1926) with Douglas Fairbanks. She was a major sex symbol of her day, and is also famous for a three year affair with Howard Hughes. 

Billie Leonard

I’m anxious to dig out the facts on this lady, as almost nothing (dates of birth or death, birth name, or her early and late life) is available readily to hand. All I know is that she was in the Broadway show You Said It (1931) with Lou Holtz, and that she had a very intense year (1934-1935) of appearing in movie shorts, many of which I’ve seen, including the very early Bob Hope musical short Paree, Paree (1934), Soft Drinks and Sweet Music (1934) with Georgie Price and Sylvia Froos, and a couple of comedies with Shemp Howard and Roscoe Ates. If and when I learn more I will share it here.

Billie Bird (Berneice Bird Sowell, 1908-2002)

You mayn’t know the name but you know the face, right? I’ll be giving her her own post in a few months as she started out in vaaudeville. She later became a bit player in tv sit coms and John Hughes movies like Sixteen Candles (1984) and Home Alone (1990).

Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan, 1915-1959)

I am way overdue to do a post on this distinctive and tragic jazz singer who remains extremely influential to this day. She took her stage name from Billie Dove (above).

Billie Rogers (1917-2014)

Singer and jazz trumpet player — in fact, she was the first female to play in the brass section of a major jazz orchestra (Woody Herman’s). She later fronted her own bands.

Billie Mae Richards (Billie Mae Dinsmore, 1921-2010)

Actress and voice over performer best known for being the voice of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in Rankin-Bass specials!

Billie Whitelaw (1932-2014)

While American audiences know her best for playing the sinister Mrs. Baylock in the original 1976 version of The Omen, she was was major sex symbol in British films of the 1950s, and one of the principal stage collaborators of playwright Samuel Beckett. 

Billie Hayes (b. 1932) 

is of course Witchie-Poo!

Billie Jean Horton (Billie Jean Jones Eshliman, b. 1933)

Country singer from Louisiana who was married to Hank Williams and Johnny Horton (“The Battle of New Orleans”) and had an affair with Johnny Cash. 

Billie Jo Spears (Billie Jean Spears, 1937-2011)

Nashville singer best known for her 1975 #1 Country Hit “Blanket on the Ground”.

Billie Jean King (b. 1943)

Champion women’s tennis player and feminist icon. But we include her on this list mainly because she re-created her famous “Battle of the Sexes” feud with Bobby Riggs on The Odd Couple in 1974.

Billie Davis (Carol Hedges, b.1945)

English pop singer of the Swinging Sixties best known for her 1963 hit “Tell Him”. She is said to have taken her stage name from Billie Holiday and Sammy Davis Jr. 

Billie Lourd (b. 1992)

Like a lot of “old school” first names, Billie-for-Girls is in the midst of a strong comeback. There are numerous female Billies on TV and the internet at present, but for the sake of sanity I’ll only mention one timely and topical one. Billie Lourd is the daughter of the late Carrie Fisher and granddaughter of the late Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. She is a star of the tv show Scream Queens and the most recent Star Wars films.

To find out more about show business history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. For more on early  film please see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com

The Five That Survived: On The Dionne Quintuplets

As you can see from our “Human Anomaly” section of Travalanche, the Born Different have always occupied a cherished, if sometimes controversial show biz niche. The spectacle of the “grotesque” is naturally a major factor, but often the appeal can be simple rarity. Such is the case with multiple birth babies. Here, rarity is the bottom line. Twins, even identical ones, no matter how amazing they are to those who experience that miracle firsthand, are generally considered too commonplace to be worth exhibiting. It has been known to happen, though. The Dolly Sisters were perhaps the most famous such in show business. (Conjoined twins, are of course a special case — these are ALWAYS considered remarkable). What has always fascinated the public are the outer limits, the world records. In the case of multiple births, for a variety of reasons, the bar is always changing. We live in the age of Octomom — her brood of surviving Octuplets were tabloid fodder throughout 2009. But as of May 28, 1934, medical science being what it was, the outer limit was a surviving set of QUINTS. That was the day an Ontario woman, Elzire Dionne (already a mother of five), gave birth to an additional five: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie.

The event became news around the world. Some exhibitors at the Chicago Century of Progress fair immediately reached out to the family to secure the babies to show to the public. But a new arrangement rapidly superseded it. Since the Dionnes were people of modest means, unable to support ten children, the babies became wards of Canada. But they went on to live very public lives anyway. A special nursery, with adjoining school and playground, was built for them to live in. The area surrounding the complex became a tourist attraction named Quintland, full of shops and concessions. Millions visited the nursery’s observation gallery and surrounding shops through 1943. The Dionne Quintuplets remain the most famous set of multiple birth babies, mostly because they were the first to come along in the age of mass media. The girls were in numerous movies, and endorsed products like Quaker Oats, Colgate Dental Cream, and Karo Corn syrup. And throughout their lives there were photo ops:

This continued for 20 years, until 1954 when Émilie became the first of the five to die. She had been prone to seizures, and accidentally suffocated during ones of these while unattended. But interest in the sisters continued. A Dionne Quints Museum opened in 1960 and remained in operation for over 50 years. At this writing, only two of the quints, Annette and Cécile, remain.

For National Siblings Day: Some Classic Show Biz Siblings

The Five Ames Sisters

It’s National Siblings Day, and to my shock I haven’t done a post yet on the countless classic show biz brothers and sisters who either had professional relationships or were in the same industry. Nepotism greases the wheels of show business. It shouldn’t surprise you that there are this many siblings in the highest echelons of entertainment. Uncharacteristically, I’m gonna go all Joe Laurie Jr on yer ass — this post will largely consist of lists of names; just click on the highlighted people to know more. Also, so as not to go crazy, I’m restricting this to the classic era: vaudeville and early motion pictures.

BROTHERS IN VAUDEVILLE

Notable vaudeville teams and acts where the members were all brothers included: The Six Brown Brothers, six brothers from Canada who were saxophone playing clowns; the acrobatic Hanlon Brothers, also six in number; the five Marx Brothers (although usually there were only four in the act at any given time); the melodious Mills Brothers (actually three brothers plus their father); the three virtually identical Ritz Brothers; the Wiere Brothers, also three in all; the Three Stooges, which usually contained at least two of the three Howard brothers: always Moe, and at various times Shemp or Curly); the three energetic Berry Brothers;  the three tap-dancing Condos Brothers; Willie and Eugene Howard (no relation to the Stooges); the wunderkind Nicholas Brothers; the Irish Kernell Brothers; the hilarious Russell Brothers (who were in drag); the Tutt Brothers of black vaudeville; the acrobalancing Rath Brothers; the Rogers Brothers, who copied Weber & Fields; and the gravity-defying Mosconi Brothers.

Al Jolson and Harry Jolson briefly performed in an act together, but later they became, fierce rivals, and later simply enemies, because Harry could hardly be called a rival to Al. Two of Grace Kelly’s uncles were in vaudeville, but separately: Walter C. Kelly was a monologist; George Kelly was an actor who wrote sketches for vaudeville before becoming a Broadway playwright.

And there are many, many more acrobatic brother acts, though it was a convention in circus and vaudeville for acrobats to call themselves “brothers” and “families”, when they weren’t technically related. Although they truly did, in a real sense adopt one another.

SISTERS IN VAUDEVILLE

Sister acts were also a major staple of vaudeville and early show business. The Seven Sutherland Sisters were like something out of a fairy tale — Snow White’s Dwarves mixed with Rapunzel. One of the most notorious of all vaudeville acts was the five Cherry Sisters (they dwindled in number as time went on), reputed to be the worst act ever. The five Barrison Sisters had a very naughty act. There were four Lane Sisters, although they tended to pair off into duos and later all went solo. There were also the Gale Quadruplets, although they were actually two sets of twin sisters. The four Whitman Sisters were stars of black vaudeville. Gracie Allen started out in an act with her sisters called The Four Colleens. The most famous sister trio is undoubtedly the Andrews Sisters.  Other trios included the Boswell Sisters, the Brox Sisters, and the Three X Sisters. The Gumm Sisters were also a trio, the youngest of whom became Judy Garland. Singing sister duos were an entire vaudeville specialty: among the biggest were the Duncan Sisters, others included the Frazee Sisters, the Oakland Sisters, and the Williams Sisters. The Watson Sisters were unusual in being low comedians; the Ponselle Sisters were opera singers; the Cameron Sisters were balletic dancers. Twin sister acts included the Dolly Sisters (famous clothes horses), the French Twin Sisters and the Fairbanks Twins.   The Hilton Sisters were conjoined!

The Hovick Sisters had performed together in a kiddie act; they later became famous separately as Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc. 

BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN VAUDEVILLE

A couple of sister-and-brother acts spring to mind, both dance teams:  Fred and Adele Astaire, and Vilma and Buddy Ebsen.  Josie and George M. Cohan performed with their parents in the Four Cohans. Most common was for several brothers and sisters to be in larger family acts together (frequently Irish), such as the Seven Little Foys, the Five Kellys (featuring Gene Kelly), the O’Connor Family (featuring Donald O’Connor), the Quillans (featuring Eddie Quillan); The Four Fords;  the Lake family act (with Arthur Lake and Florence Lake);  and the Morris family act (including Chester Morris). Fanny Brice’s brother Lew Brice was also in vaudeville, although the two performed separately.

SILENT/SLAPSTICK COMEDY BROTHERS

An interesting phenomenon: when the top silent comedians made it big, They often found work for their brothers, some of whom made good for themselves, some of whom didn’t.

Charlie’s Chaplin’s older half-brother Sydney Chaplin is one of those who did make good. He actually taught Charlie much of what he knew and got him his job with Karno’s Speechless Comedians. A true talent in his own right, he was a star himself in the teens and twenties. Charlie’s other half-brother Wheeler Dryden also showed up at certain point, and made himself useful in the family business, though he was never a star. Likewise, Buster Keaton put his parents and his brother Jingles and sister Louise into his films, not surprising, since they had performed in vaudeville together. Harold Lloyd put his brother Gaylord Lloyd into films, but he didn’t click. Lupino Lane and Stanley Lupino both came from the same family of British music hall clown/acrobats. Both starred in shorts at Educational Pictures, although the former fared better than the latter. And then there the brothers Parrott: Charles (better known as Charley Chase) and Paul, both prodigious talents both before and behind the camera. And then there are great comedy produce/director brothers Jack White and Jules White.

IMPRESARIOS OF STAGE AND SCREEN

Notable producing brothers include the Ringling Brothers of the circus world, the Minskys of burlesque; the Shuberts; the Frohmans; and the Lemaire brothers of Broadway; the Warner Brothers; Jack and Harry Cohn of Columbia; the Schenck Brothers, and Cecil B. Demille and his brother, director/screenwriter/playwright William DeMille. Broadway comedian and producer Lew Fields’s three children Joseph, Herbert and Dorothy were important Broadway creators, sometimes collaborating; the Gershwin brothers were one of the great songwriting teams.

DRAMATIC ACTORS AND DIRECTORS 

Some famous acting siblings included John, Lionel and Ethyl Barrymore; Mary Pickford and her brother Jack; Lillian and Dorothy Gish; Wallace and Noah Beery; the Talmadge Sisters; Joan, Constance and Barbara Bennett; and Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine.

Director John Ford got into films because his brother Francis was a movie star. Director Raoul Walsh’s brother was the actor George Walsh. Dustin and William Farnum were both actors, and their brother Marshall, a director.

Okay, I have to post this now before the day’s half over. I’m certain I’ll be adding to it!

 

100 Years Ago Today: America Enters WWI (and Its Impact on Vaudeville)

Today is the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into World War One.

We who have not felt the sting of a proper World War in over six decades years cannot appreciate the deuced inconvenience such a development can be, especially where important matters like show business are concerned. Prior to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, successful British and American entertainers spent a good deal of their time on boats. Performers like Houdini, Will Rogers and W.C. Fields literally had steamer trunks with customs stamps from the great world capitals plastered on them. When the shooting started, all that dried up. Americans were deprived of their favorite British Music Hall stars for the most part; though some brave Americans continue to travel to the embattled countries. Some, like the indefatigable Elsie Janis traveled right into the war zones to entertain the troops.

Patriotism in the era amounted to a mania. Prior to America’s entry into the conflict, thespians like Alla Nazimova could present pacifist playlets in the vaud houses. Once we entered the war, such messages were out; George M. Cohan “Over There” (introduced by Nora Bayes) was more in keeping with the times.

As will happen in wartime, even the most heterogeneous cultural institution of all — vaudeville — spoke with a single voice on this issue. Shortly after America joined the war, Cohan called a special meeting of vaudevillians to see who would join the war effort. Every hand shot up.Vaudeville vets like Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks did their part by crisscrossing the nation selling millions in war bonds.

Gummo Marx was drafted; he ended up leaving his family act the Marx Brothers and being replaced by Zeppo. At the same time, many so-called Dutch or German dialect comedians, such as Grouch Marx, feeling the weight of anti-German sentiment, dropped those kinds of characters from their repertoire. And some were to pay the ultimate price. Vernon Castle, one-half of the nation’s premier dance team enlisted in the RAF (he was Canadian) and died in a crash. James Reese Europe commanded a whole musical unit — and was finally murdered by one of his own musicians while he was still in uniform.

Now save the date! Metropolitan Playhouse’s 25th Anniversary Gala is April 25 & I’m organizing and hosting a World War One tribute as the entertainment!  We have Peter Daniel Straus and Chris Rozzi as Weber and Fields! Gay Marshall singing Parisian songs of the era! The one and only Lorinne Lampert doing George M. Cohan material! The Two and Only Jonathan M. Smith doing English music hall! A presentation of Nazimova’s famous starring vehicle War Brides directed by Ivana Cullinan and starring Alyssa Simon, Victoria Miller, Morgan Zipf-Meister, and Amy Overman Plowman! and Charlie Chaplin’s The Bond, accompanied by Ben Model! And more! Hosted and interpreted by yours truly Trav SD! It’s going to be a memorable evening — In fact, I remember it already! Tickets, reservations and information all here. 

To find out more about the history of vaudeville, please consult my critically acclaimed book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many other fine establishments. And don’t miss my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

Hustling Hitler: The Jewish Vaudevillian Who Fooled the Fuhrer

It undoubtedly speaks to my present state of mind that I wasn’t crazy about Hustling Hitler: The Jewish Vaudevillian Who Fooled The Fuhrer. Someone recommended it to me online just knowing I’d love it, and the title certainly sounds like the kind of thing I’d really go for, for a multiplicity of reasons. But the title mis-sells it. I was expecting and hoping for a real-life story perhaps mixing elements of To Be or Not to Be, I am a Camera, and Schindler’s List, featuring real-life derring-do and heroism by a cabaret performer deep in the heart of the Third Reich…

Instead, the book’s subject turns out to be an American flim-flam artist, vaudeville manager and impresario from Troy, New York named Freeman Bernstein. His “hustle” of Hitler consisted of selling him a few tons of scrap metal under the premise that it was a shipment of nickel, much in demand as Germany was preparing for war. Even as a swindle this strikes me as rather contemptible, lacking whimsy or creativity, just kind of a bottom-feeding theft. I’m glad it happened to Nazis, but if it happened to anyone else I’d say, “Clap that dude in irons and bring him bad food.” Further, the book, in the tradition of its subject, keeps you on the hook for over 300 pages before finally delivering its underwhelming story. It is preceded by pages of lore about the guy’s show biz career running amusement parks and small time vaudeville houses, and crossing paths with the occasional person of note, such as Mae West, to whom he once tried to sell some fake jewels. (It’s not so easy to sell fake diamonds to Diamond Lil).

The book is a labor of love by Bernstein’s great-nephew Walter Shapiro and has the flavor of family anecdote, a long, winding bar-room story at long last set down on paper. I’m going to hang on to it for awhile and perhaps mine it later for vaudeville lore. But at the moment I am much less interested in vaudevillians per se than in VAUDEVILLIANS WHO TOPPLE NAZIS, know’m sayin’?

More Than Munchkins: An Illustrated History of Performing Little People

Today happens to be the birthday of both Fleming W. Ackerman (a.k.a “Colonel Speck”) and Major Edward Newell (a.k.a. “General Grant, Jr.”). (Click on the links to learn more about these illustrious Little People.

If the odds of a Little Person being born are small, and the odds of a performing Little Person even smaller, think how small the odds of TWO performing Little People being born on the same day! Seems to me an auspicious time to announce here my upcoming talk at the Morbid Anatomy Museum, entitled More Than Munchkins: An Illustrated History of Performing Little People. 

For centuries Little People have been a mainstay of popular entertainment. In this illustrated talk, I will trace the historical ups and downs of very short-statured entertainers from medieval times through the era of P.T. Barnum and dime museums, to side shows and circuses, to vaudeville, to movies and television. Along the way, we trace the evolution of the Little Person’s image in popular culture, from one of cruel derision in the age of the court jester…to one of glamour, as personified by sex symbol and Emmy-winning actor Peter Dinklage…to a virtual return to carny days on reality tv.

The talk will take place Monday August 22, 2016 at 7pm at the Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Ave, Brooklyn. Tickets are $8

More info and tickets are here: http://morbidanatomymuseum.org/event/more-than-munchkins-a-history-of-performing-little-people-an-illustrated-lecture-with-trav-s-d/